The Naturalistic Period
Feature
<div>Apply principles of scientific determinism to fiction & drama</div>
<div>Viewing human beings as animals in the natural world <br>responding to environmental forces & internal stresses & drives</div>
Representative Figure
Theodore Dreiser <br>(1871-1945)
<div>American values—materialistic</div>
Masterpieces : <br>Sister Carrie (1900) ; <br>The American Tragedy (1925)<div>Trilogy of desire : <br>The Financer ( 1912 ) ; <br>The Titan ( 1914 ) ; <br>The Stoic ( 1945 )</div>
The Modern Period
Lost Generation
<div>American writers caught in WWI and cut off from the old values ; <br>unable to come to terms with the new era</div>
<div>F. Scott Fitzgerald </div>
1896-1940
<div>The Great Gatsby<br>—a masterpiece in American literature</div>
<div>end of the American Dream</div>
<div>Ernest Hemingway</div>
1899-1961
<div>Nobel Prize winner</div>
<div>Hemingway's world—chaotic & meaningless</div>
<div>Hero possessing a "despairing courage"</div>
<div>writing style— colloquialism</div>
Modern Poetry
<div>Representative Figure</div>
Ezra Pound (1885-1972)
<div>a link between US & Britain</div><div> Imagism</div>
The Cantos—<br>he wrote & published until his death
The Contemporary Period
Black Writers
<div>* Richard Wright—Native Son (1940)</div><div>* Ralph Ellison—Invisible Man (1952) </div><div>* James Baldwin—Go Tell It on the Mountain (1954)</div>
Langston Hughes <br>(1902-1967)
poet laureate, literary figure of Harlem Renaissance
embraced African-American jazz rhythms <br>& incorporated blues, spirituals, colloquial speech, & folkways in his poetry
<div>most beloved poem "The Negro Speaks of Rivers"</div>
Jewish Writers
focus upon Jewish characters & social questions, <br>& bring a distinctively Jewish sense of humor to their novels
<div>Yiddish—language used by European Jews </div>
Saul Bellow<br> (1915-2005)
<div>Won Nobel Prize in 1976</div>
The Beat Movement
<div>central Beat writers</div>
<div>William Burroughs </div><div>Allen Ginsberg</div><div>Jack Kerouac</div>
<div>express emotion "raw", rather than "cooked" <br>through memory & translation into art</div>
Literature of Modern South
<div>William Faulkner—Nobel Prize winning novelist </div>
<div>Major works :</div><div>* The Sound and the Fury (1929)</div><div>* As I Lay Dying (1930)</div>
stories set in a small southern county, <br>exploration of basic human nature & basic patterns <br>of human behavior make them enduring works in world literature
Women's Voices
<div>Feminist movement during the 1960s & 1970s affected <br>American culture & women's relationship with the opposite sex. </div>
Tony Morrison (1931- )
Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993
<div>famous novels—The Bluest Eye (1970) <br>& Beloved (1987)</div>
Alice Walker (1944- )
spoke for the women's movement, <br>for the anti-nuclear movement
received the Pulitzer Prize in 1983 for The Color Purple
Amy Tan (1952- )
<div>Chinese-American writer</div>
portrays the lives of Chinese American daughters <br>& their Chinese immigrant mothers
Drama
rise of American drama in 20th century
With the opening of theatres, drama turned up <br>as an influential literary form in American literature
three representative playwrights
Eugene O’Neill (1888-1953)
won Nobel Prize in 1936
Tennessee Williams (1911-1983)
wrote of isolated <br>& lonely people of American society
Arthur Miller (1915-2005)
"social dramatist"
<div>concerns the conflicts of the individual within society</div>
presents a social critique of the inhuman capitalist system
